IT News about Google and Related Marketplace Apps

What is Paperpile?
Can’t keep track of all your papers and reference materials. Compiling bibliographies driving you nuts? Use Paperpile, a citation management tool integrated with the Google apps ecosystem. The IT Division has recently acquired Paperpile and is providing it FREE to all Lab employees. What you can do with Paperpile:
Easily organize your papers, folders, PDFs in Google Drive and automatic insertion of citations within Google Docs
Search your library quickly by keyword, author,…

If you notice a strange calendar event which appears to be spam, our Commons instructions page https://commons.lbl.gov/x/LILNBQ will help you learn the steps to report the event to Google.
If these steps do not resolve the spam issue, please contact Help Desk at (510) 486-4357 (xHELP).

Google is enhancing their takeout service (the ability to extract your data out of Google Services). Calendar data has recently been added and Gmail is next. A recent techcrunch article http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/data-portability-win-google-now-lets-you-export-all-your-gmail-calendar-data-via-google-takeout/ provides some background.
When you are logged in to Google, look for the person icon in the upper right and click on it.
a1.jpg
Then click "account".…

Google deployed a full-screen mode for the New Compose in Gmail and it is now available to users at LBL.
From Google's announcement ....
Key combinations:
Hold down Shift when you click the full-screen icon to pop the window out entirely. Holding Shift when you click Compose (or keyboard shortcut c) will also start a tear-off.
The formatting bar also shows by default now when you open compose in a new window or in a new tab (Ctrl+Compose or keyboard shortcut d).…

Both Google and Smartsheet have improved their Forms capabilities.
Google Forms:
Users now have access to a new version of Google Forms. Just as with Docs, Sheets and Slides, you can now collaborate with others in real-time. Multiple users can work on the same form simultaneously. Unlike the previous version, forms are no longer tied to a specific spreadsheet. Responses are collected and stored only in the form. If owners prefer to see the data in a spreadsheet,…

Google has announced a unified storage plan in which storage is allocated in one bundle to their Google Gmail, Drive and Google+ services. We expect to see this roll out to Enterprise customers after May 21.
5/24/13 - Note: The rollout is now expected to start May 28)
g1.jpg
(credit to Google for the above image)
"As a result of today’s storage change, Gmail inboxes for Google Apps customers are no longer limited to 25 GB - any additional storage you purchase can be shared and used by Gmail.…

Update: This appears to be resolved as of ~6:20AM Pacific
Google Apps Services (gmail, calendar, docs, etc) are down this morning due to issues at Google. There is no ETA, though past experience suggests these outages have an average duration of < 1 hour. You may be able to read your email on your mobile device.

Google continually enhances the products they provide to customers. We want to bring some of these to your attention and also give everyone a heads-up on recent efforts by IT's Google Support Team.
We would also like to encourage anyone with a special interest in Google, to join the LBL Google Users Group (primarily a mailing list which we use to provide advance notice of new features, request feedback, and follow community discussions). Join the group by going here https://groups.google.…

Google just announced in their Official Enterprise Blog http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/04/introducing-google-drive-newest-member.html today that they are releasing Google Drive to consumer and Rapid Release Google Apps domains. Berkeley Lab is on Rapid Release.
What is Google Drive?
With Google Drive, your users can securely upload any file or folder to the web and access the most up-to-date versions of those files from anywhere.…

A quick survey of Google sites users turned up some interesting results. (survey done with Google Docs>Forms tool)
Collaborative Team sites was the category chosen most often. We are speculating that conferences and workshops will be a use case that will increase in the future.
s1.jpg
We think it is interesting that over a third of the responses indicated they would not have used another tool if Google Sites was not available.…

Earlier this month, Google made big headlines with a major overhaul of its privacy policies. Google has described these changes as necessary to both simplify its policies and enable more customized content across its services. Critics have charged that the new policies make changes that are privacy-unfriendly and that the new policies permit too much freedom of action by Google.
I want to spend a few minutes talking about what this means from the perspective of LBL's use of Google Apps.…

On January 20, we added a Google Marketplace application called GQueues to the portfolio of applications we are offering LBL Google users. We have a one year subscription for the Lab - enough time to find out if LBL can make effective use of this tool.
GQueues provides an excellent Task Management alternative to the basic version that comes with Google Mail and Calendar.…

The New Look for Gmail has been turned on for Berkeley Lab. This is similar to the look consumer users of Gmail have had for a number of weeks. It may take awhile for this to roll out to all users.
One change may confuse you: where we now see Mail, Contacts, and Tasks as separate links in the upper left hand corner, the new look has a single choice with a drop down allowing you to select something different.
gmail1.jpg
As was the case in Google Docs, you can select the density (comfortable,…

Google+ was released to Enterprise Customers and we added it to the LBL domain on October 27.
Feature highlights
Google+ Profiles: Create a profile with information about yourself. For example, you can add information about your projects or expertise and share it only with other employees. You can choose which information is visible to others inside or outside our organization. The only exception is your name, which is always publicly visible. Learn more about Google+ Profiles http://www.…

Commons contains user-contributed content and
does not represent the position or endorsement of the Laboratory, DOE,
or the University of California. Your use of this site is subject to
our security and privacy policies.

A U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory Operated by the University of California